


Afternoon Drive

by Livia_LeRynn



Series: Rolling Stones Turn to Sand (if They Don't Find a Place to Stand) [6]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Dealing With Trauma, F/M, First Times, Furiosa POV, Max POV, Maxiosa - Freeform, Mention of Past Sexual Assault, Panic Attack, Post-Canon, Post-Movie, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Wasteland vistas, adults acting like awkward teenagers, alternating pov, joyriding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livia_LeRynn/pseuds/Livia_LeRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Was offering Max a permanent position at The Citadel a misstep?  It certainly looks that way.  Maybe a quiet drive to nowhere is just what Max and Furiosa need to get themselves back on the right road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aw Fuck It

**Author's Note:**

> All of my Mad Max fics happen in the same universe. Chronologically this one is between _She Used To Dance_ and _Little Mate_.

“Max.” Her voices bounces off the stone. He turns and watches her approach, one purposeful step at a time. 

He’d known this was coming; it’s the first time Furiosa’s spoken to him since he refused her offer to make him her Prime. He’s been stranded since then, waiting for repairs to his car. He’s even taken to sleeping in the back seat. To keep closer tabs on the work? To avoid her? Probably both. The truth is that her room and his car are the only two places he can sleep in the world.

And she has to know. That’s why her steps have slowed; she’s second guessing every carefully considered word. 

“The girls are planning a celebration, a holiday, in ten days. They would like for you to be there. It’s the six month anniversary.”

He nods, remembering when people used to track time in months and years. “What about you?”

Of course she’ll be there; she has to know that isn’t what he means. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

He wants something more, but then again he doesn’t. So he hurries the tension on it’s way. “I’ll try.” 

It’s the most commitment he can give on much of anything, but so far it’s been enough. He’s hasn’t failed her yet when she’s asked for something, but she knows better than to ask for too much. He says what he means and means what he says. She knows this too; so why isn’t his promise of effort enough? Why is she still here with her gaze lingering somewhere by his right hip?

“Let’s go for a ride,” she finally says. 

“Mmhmm.” He has no room to refuse her. There’s nowhere to run, and on some level, he knows he owes her the truth – that the job offer, all the excitement about Dag’s soon-to-arrive baby, and Furiosa’s very presence all just cut too close. 

She drives first. She runs both hands over her wheel once it's been fixed to the steering shaft. Only after they're safely on their way does she tell him, "First time with the new hand."

She flexes her new fingers like she's not entirely satisfied with their grip. With anyone else this would make him uneasy. He hates being a passenger anyway. But he lets himself sink into the seat as The Wasteland welcomes them. It's beautiful in it’s way – brilliant blues and ranges, boundless expanses, everywhere to run but nowhere to hide.

The car is strange for both of them, a left side driver like she prefers, a little too round, a little too light. It takes her a moment to adjust, but once she does, she shows her joy in her eyes as they zip along the desert into the late afternoon sun. Her eyes moisten, and he imagines her longing for the road washing over her like a cloud of dust. She pushes through, maintains her focus, while the softening light bathes her face.

She pulls down the visor and smears grease around her eyes. “It’s not just for show,” she explain. “It keeps the sunlight around your eyes instead of in them.” She gestures at the blackened joint between the steering wheel and the shaft. “Here, you try.”

The grease is slick between his fingers. It’s not ordinary grease- it smells different. He takes a long whiff, but he still can't quite place the scent. He runs his fingers across his brow. The grease slips off his fingers easily. 

The grease paint suits her well. He steals a glance while he paints his own skin. It emphasizes her eyes, makes them pop when she open them wide, and it makes them seem to recede into her when she squints. The black line beneath them makes her jaw look even more stubborn. 

She takes a hard right turn with exhilarating speed. The little car sings. “You know,” she says while still facing forward, “you can still stay in my room. It’s our room really.”

“I know.”

It didn't feel like his space though, even after she ordered a cot brought down from the dome so they wouldn't have to squeeze themselves onto her bed. She always refused the cot even though it was far more comfortable then her stone platform with a mattress pad and even kept the cot folded and hidden when he wasn't expected. He'd never questioned it.

The faces she'd drawn on her walls were different though. Sometimes when the two of them had awoken early he would point to a face be ask her about it. So he met her mothers and her father, the man who lead her scavenger band when she lived in the wastes, and the woman who read books to the girls when they were wives. He met members of her crew and her childhood friends. The faces disconcerted hm at first, especially how they seemed to watch him, but hearing their stories made them seem less malevolent at least. He never asked about one face though. He'd actually been hoping that she would erase it once he had made clear that his departure was intended to be temporary, but when he returned to The Citadel a second time the face was still there. The fact that she had drawn him wasn't the issue, it was the fact that she had drawn him from her own hazy memory at the singular moment when he was at his best.

She continues, “If you were to become my Prime, us sharing would be inappropriate…at least given what everyone else thinks.”

Their closeness is no secret, and the entire Citadel seems to assume it goes farther than it does, and why wouldn't they? He doesn't even have a good answer for why the two of them haven't tried...anything really. He can only think of one answer; his constant companion good, old fashioned fear. But it's not the fear he knows, not the one that fires up his heart and blocks out the old aches in his joints. It's a nagging, whispering thing, and as much can as he thinks it may be right, he's getting tired of it.

As he watches Furiosa and thinks about what she's saying, he feels himself mimicking what he’s affectionately come to think of as her _Aw fuck it_ face. “What if…they were right.”

She still hasn’t turns to look at him. “I’ve wondered that too.” She takes another turn, a left this time. “I just don’t know how.” He was definitely not expecting that response, but she’s quick to clarify. “Of course I know physically.” She glances at him in her rear vision mirror. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to.” He’d guessed as much when she said she’d been ‘taken.’ He didn’t need details. He will hear those stories when she's ready to tell them, or not - some stories are better left untold.

She nods, probably more to herself than to him and fixes her eyes on the road. How many times has she driven it? He's about to drop the subject, to just enjoy the ride when he sees that familiar look in eye. She takes a slow and subtle breath, like she's hoping he won't notice, but she pauses like she's hoping he will. He can almost hear her thinking, _Aw fuck it_ as she guns the engine.


	2. Like a Walk Among Craters

It would be risky,” Max says.

“Aren’t all important things?” Furiosa asks as she makes the little car jump over a ditch.

She’s clearly pleased with herself, with the timing of the jump, with her handling of the car…and she should be...Not that the jump was difficult, or that she’s rarely clever…more that she deserves the simple pleasures of easy jumps and playful cleverness. She deserves to enjoy herself. She’s beautiful when she’s having fun. She’s beautiful all the time really, but fun is just so rare. 

He chuckles in agreement. He inches closer to her, letting their thighs touch in the kind of simple connection they’ve shared for half a year now. It’s a fragile thing, not to be taken for granted, precious…too valuable to risk.

Today has been a good day so far. The ghosts have been strangely quiet, even Glory. She's taken to pretending to drive the Interceptor. She pushed him into honking the horn early this morning and cackled like a madwoman when half the shop pups jumped awake and ran down from their bunks in the neighboring room. She liked the fact that they blamed it on him, The Hairy Man as they called, even more. They, jokingly he thinks, threatened to send him back to The Boss if he kept making a ruckus. Getting Max blamed for things seems to be Glory's favorite pastime, and that incident seems to have filled her mischief quota for the day.

Yes, Glory is fond of shoving. Since her abilities to affect the world are limited, she has made a game out of shoving Max into various people and object. Too bad she didn't come along she is missing a prime opportunity to shove Max into her favorite target, the one she likes to call Spiky Lady. And right now Max wishes he had that extra shove.

### 

Furiosa is intimately aware of Max’s form against hers. That's the thing about touch as she's discovering it. There are the necessary touches of battle that hardly register against the cloud of chaos and adrenaline. There are the casual touches of close spaces that fade into the background as simple comforts of home. But a single, deliberate touch is something else entirely. Now that she's noticed Max’s thigh pressing against hers, she can think of nothing else.

She flexes her right hand. It has been gripping the wheel so tightly as to make her knuckles show pale underneath her fading tan. She reaches for him and sets her hand on the apex of his thigh. He jumps a bit when she finds a tear in the seam of his pants just wide enough for the tip of her finger. Then he relaxes, and she is free to explore how the edges of the worn fabric fray, veiling his flesh in little threads. The skin underneath is surprisingly soft, and she wonders how often even the wind has touched where she is now touching. 

She retracts her hand momentarily to maneuver the car around a boulder. When she does she becomes aware of his hand landing on her own thigh. She feels every minute shift in his hand’s weight, how the fingers spread and how each one exerts a slightly different level of pressure. She places her own hand over it, feels the dry skin over his knuckles and traces the scar on the back of his palm. 

She wonders how many more scars he has, if they are jagged and angry like some of hers or neat and serene like this one. She notes the sun-bleached hair on his forearm and wonders how far the coverage extends before giving way to the bare, soft flesh of unexposed areas. His chest, his belly, his back? Does it cushion his falls like her hair ever so slightly absorbs blows? Fitting that the pups call him Hairy Man; they instantly assumed he was high ranking as such body hair would interfere with the white powder. The boys spend so much time plucking theirs. But on Max it marks him as a creature of the wasteland, wild, dangerous, unpredictable, an adventure unto himself. For as much time as she’s spent in close proximity to men’s bodies, she’s never encountered one she was so keen to explore.

She wonders a great many things about him. Where does he come from? Where has he been? For all the time they’ve spent together, most of it has been spent in a comfortable silence. Their conversations have been like walking among craters – take the most direct route along the flattest terrain, step on the steadiest rocks, admire the crevices, but don’t venture in.


	3. First Time That Counts

The road ahead is clear - No obstacles, no other cars, just a smooth, straight path. She knows these lands well. The dust grows to gravel, and the slight undulations of the land lift into the eroding hills that line the edge of the first of the Powder Lakes. So Furiosa tears her eyes away. 

Max is already watching her. She should have felt his attention; she wonders if she's slipping. His eyes are bright like moons beneath his grease-darkened forehead – wide, frightened moons. 

“What’s wrong?” she begins to ask, but then she looks closer. She recognises the fear that isn’t really fear, the slightly parted mouth… she curls her finger around his wrist… the quickened pulse. She’s seen them in many people, in her mothers as they drank wine around the fire many, many years ago, in The Dag and Cheedo when they thought no one was watching… in people she doesn’t care to remember. But the fear that isn't clear has a different kind of familiarity now, like something in a rearvision mirror: objects always seems closer than they appear.

His fingers interlace with hers. She locks down the gas pedal. She leans towards him, and they meet in the center of the car. His right hand finds the back of her neck, where the old flames of scarred flesh reach for her bristled hair. She feels the tiny prickles of her flesh goosing, and chill, though the temperature hasn't yet dropped.

Their mouths meet – first hovering in parallel like an exchange of glances. The breath from his nose tickles her upper lip, reminding her to breath. Then they touch, and she’s a foolish child all over again.

He’s waiting, she realises, for her to respond, and it reminds her of stories of old gods who's powers ended at doorways. She presses her lips against his and lets them part in invitation revealing their slippery insides.

Is the road still clear? She checks her peripheral vision – still good. She lets her eyes close. She feels the hum of the road in her bones and something she thinks might be the deep hunger she had heard so much about.

She finds the divot between his deltoid and bicep. Yeah – well built for a feral, well built for anyone really. And he tastes like… something she can't quite place, but his mouth is wet, wet like a secret oasis. Miss Giddy told her once that the human body is 60% water… And yet, dry shells wander from place to place – dried out shells kicking up dust. _Water Brother_ – she can't remember where she heard the phrase, but it feels fitting.

The kiss ends slowly at first then all at once. Maybe it's the pink cast of the long light, but Max seems to be blushing. “First time since Jessie,” he mumbles and then looks away, “first time that counts anyway.”

Jessie, that's a name she's heard him say in his sleep, when he's more vocal but even further out of reach than usual. She's never asked who belonged to that name, and now she doesn't need to.

“First time with a man.” She will his eyes back to hers and then holds his gaze, “First time that counts anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Water Brother" comes from Robert A. Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_. I imagine Miss Giddy kept a copy. My main fic, _7000 Days_ will detail Furiosa's expose sure to classical, sci-fi, and fantasy literature and their influence on her in future chapters. Sneak Peak: _Dune_ is her favorite.
> 
> Hope kissed Max in the video game. I think it's pretty clear from his expression that he wasn't into it. I'm sure there have been others as well. I don't want to assume he's been celibate for the past 18-20 years, but I don't think it's entirely out of the question. He's probably had sex a handful of times over the years but in an animalistic, get it out of his system kind of way.


	4. A Nice Spot

Furiosa's touch has left iridescent dark smudges on his pants. Her fingers are still stained with it: iridescent grey-green smears almost black against her skin. Max imagines his greased fingers exploring her body, tracing leaving the ridges of her collarbones, venturing down her sternum and through the canyon between her breasts. Like notes on a map, the marks would lead him back – Back to what? At least he wouldn’t be lost. But what if he already is? He knows the weight of her head on his breast. He knows how her breathing changes as she surrenders to sleep. He tries not to think about the scars on her middle or his frantic fumblings for hints of her ribs through her thick clothing. He imagines black fingerprints on her flaring ribs. They stretch and shrink with each defiant breath.

He feels unbearably present… like long absent circulation rushing back to a waking limb…all pins and needles and creaking joints. Lost is an understatement.

He doesn’t think Jessie minds. If she does, she’s never told him so. Long ago when he stopped praying to God he started praying to Jessie, but she was just as silent. After that he prayed to no one.

“Max.” 

Her voice is soft and expectant, equal parts question and command. He follows it back to the little car, now parked where the hills of the Citadel piedmont gives way to the emptiness of the Plains of Silence. Its silvery vastness glows with the low beams of the setting sun. Furiosa is lingering, holding the car door open, waiting for him. He can even smell the salt. What does she have in mind- a break? A switch? She motions for him to join her as she slips out of the car then closes the door behind her.

He follows her short distance and stands beside her when she stops. “Nice spot,” he muses aloud as he slips his hands in his pockets. Then for a reason he can’t quite place he adds, “I was somewhere around here when I was taken.”

“Oh,” she looks away. “We can go somewhere else…” she offers.

“Nah, I never finished admiring the view.”

He likes how the salt flats make him feel small, like they could swallow him. They remind him of is favorite thing about himself: his own insignificance. He could just wander out into the silvery nothing and never look back. That’s all he's wanted for years: just to disappear.

She places her hand on his shoulder. He can't help but thinking of the dark stains on her fingers. “I like that it's quiet,” he finally says.

"Me too," she says in such a way that makes him think he must not be the only one with a story about this place.

A little pressure from the heel of Furiosa's hand guides him towards her. He wraps his arms around her back. He searches her web of leather straps for a place where he can touch her and not her armour. His hands settle on her right shoulder blade and in the small of her back. Her muscles tense as she presses her self into him; they lift the dark lines of leather so they resemble highways through mountainous country. If he'd kept to these roads, he wouldn't be so lost.

Their faces meet – hungrily this time. Sliding lips and quickened breaths fill the silence. His mouth moves down her jaw to her neck, and he notes the salty remnants of sweat he finds there. Her restless gasps are the only winds.

He remembers when driving out to the middle of nowhere to kiss a girl was a rebellious act, or at least when his teenage self thought so. There were spots young lovers favored for their low traffic, but the consequences of discovery then were some sort of parental shaming or punishment. Now the stakes are higher. 

But here at the end of the world, they are alone. Somewhere along here is a line that even the lizards won’t cross, and here they straddle it. Something stirs his old rebellious tendencies; they stretch out their weary joints with creaks and pops. There’s something defiant about the meeting of two wet mouths on the edge of endless salt. _Fuck you world! Fuck you fate!_

And does anyone notice? Does anyone care? How dare a man be so bold, so arrogant as to assume he is entitled to any measure of happiness? Another man might be able to slip a gesture such as this by unnoticed. But not Max, and perhaps that is why his rebellion feels so visceral, so immediate, like that kind he will regret in the morning. What’s the price of two angry middle fingers to the sky? He reckons in must be less then the price of two carelessly dancing tongues.


	5. Obligations

Furiosa's knees buckle as chills dance over half her body, just half. She tips her head back. Furiosa half giggles, half smiles. The sound that escapes her mouth is alien and ancient, like an old friend almost forgotten.

“Y’alright?” Max asks, sounding pleasantly amused. His voice brings her back to Earth. 

“Oh, uh…” She can't begin to describe the ache deep in her belly. She dives for his neck. “Everything’s new,” she huffs into to hollow where his pulse meets his flesh.

She's eager to see if he reacts the same way she did. He does, enthusiastically – dips his head back into her waiting right hand. Her fingers entangle themselves with the wispy strands of hair just starting to curl at the back of his neck.

She isn't quite sure what to do with her left hand. She’d designed it for her practical needs, for gripping a steering wheel, firing a gun…. She’d never thought she might need it for tender touches. She’d never thought she'd be so interested in the texture of skin.

He arcs into her. He's pliable beneath her touch. Then he counterattacks with a nip to her earlobe. He flicks it with his tongue. She imagines pink electricity, like the sparks that bring a dead battery back to life. She jolts so hard she wants to cry out. Her voice catches in her throat.

They crash into eachother. Her knees fold beneath both their weights. She leans back into the dust. The powder lakes are not as soft as they look. She'll have bruises later, and she doesn't mind. His mouth finds her neck again; she squirms playfully. But pressed between man and ground, she feels open…vulnerable…desperate…

And then her breath catches sharply in her throat. Maybe it's the shock of the tumble. Maybe it's the weight of his body pressing her to the ground while her neck is so exposed. Whatever it is, it pulls up her knees and starts her heart pounding. 

_Bi-dim-bi-dim-bi-dim_. That's all the heartbeats she lets go by before she lets out a ragged grunt and rolls Max to his back. Now she’s straddling his pelvis. Her breaths are chaotic, panicked, howling. She digs the balls of her feet into the ground. She's coiled, cocked, loaded. Her chest rumbles like an earthquake. 

_Bi-dim-bi-dim-bi-dim_. Her vision has closed in around him, and the concern in his eyes is the only thing grounding her to reality. She clings to that concern and finds the will to keep from striking him. She clings to that concern as she waits out the storm. _Bi-dim. Bi-dum. Ba-dum_. 

"Did I do something wrong?” Max asks.

Furiosa shuts her eyes in shame and shakes her head. “I just….” But she doesn’t have the words.

It's subsiding now anyway, the panic, the fear. She feels more in control. She leans in to kiss him like nothing happened, but their momentum has been lost. Instead she presses herself against him. She buries her face in his chest so he can't see her biting back tears. 

“Let's just watch the stars come out,” he says as he guides her into him. 

She nods, momentarily forgetting about the grease on her forehead and the fact that he can't see her at this angle... She presses her eyes closed as she lifts her head. “How about just the sunset? I have to get back.” She hopes he knows she doesn't mean it as anything other than the simple truth that she's stayed out too long. She’ll already be late for the sunset watering. The people will be waiting. “Obligations,” she explains. 

“OK.” 

He drapes an arm around her waist. She adjusts so she's curled against him like she does when she's sleeping in those last few moments of night drawn out at the leading edge of day. She’s missed this more than she's let herself believe. 

She told him once that he didn't understand obligations. It was the only time they'd ever argued. He'd refused her the freedom she gave him without question, something Miss Giddy used to call, “the dignity of risk.” He punched a wall, her wall… their wall… until his knuckles bled. Then he helped her anyway and never pressed the issue. 

"I'm sorry,” she mutters, “for everything.” And she is. She’s sorry she found his ignition switch even though she wasn't trying. She's sorry for ruining their fun with her silly panic attack. She's sorry to have to go back to make her watering speech. She's sorry she drove him from their bedroom with her stupid attempt to keep him there.

That had to have been what she was thinking when she asked him to be her prime. There was no other way she could rationalise such a misguided selection. He doesn’t know anything about The Citadel and its myriad of problems. He doesn’t know troops or drilling or battle plans or diplomacy… Or maybe he does, she think as she remembers the map drawn in blood and soot on a thin scrap of cloth. 

She sighs, and releases the tension from her body, her every way of structuring the world feeling painfully inadequate. It almost hurts - how little she knows about him. He wraps his arms around her. She knows his scents, his rhythms, his moods; she can read the way his face tights or softens, the spaces between his words- except when she can't. Like now- he's unreadable to her... a mystery... like a book with missing pages or a poem in an ancient language she's only beginning to learn.

She'll just have to learn. And in a way, accepting her inadequacy, her ignorance, is a bit like surrender, like She feels small and weak and all the things she hates feeling, and yet… She still hates them, just not quite as much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Max/Furiosa argument was over whether to kill Corpus or try and negotiate terms with him. Furiosa felt like she needed him alive to take advantage of his experience with the Citadel infrastructure. This fic is in progress.
> 
> "Groundlings," used to be called "The Wretched."


	6. Two Truths and a Lie

Max is careful not to startle Furiosa with his touch. He knows the wild look in her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks. He's seen it when she jolts from sleep or when someone approaches too aggressively from the shadows. He’s jumped practically out of his skin plenty of times. He knows the sour taste of fear. 

And then it moves on, and she’s left skittish and frazzled and desperately pretending everything is normal. So he says nothing, and he waits, and he understands. She doesn’t need to pretend because this is as close to normal as anything will ever be. Sometimes you just have to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. 

Sometimes the storm sneaks up on you. Sometimes it catches you from behind or appears out of nowhere. Sometimes you see it looming ahead where the blue sky turns rusty black; you know exactly what’s happening and you foolishly run headlong into it anyway. 

He’s not as brave as she is; he's not as strong. She’s already shaking the dust from her clothes and moving forward. He would still be all wild eyes and shaking hands. She's still fighting; he doesn't know what or why, but she is. Her tears fall on his chest. He has nothing to offer, but he wants to give her the stars. 

"Let's play a game," she says, "while we wait."

“Mm-hmm.” He nods. 

“Two truths and a lie?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t we be drinking?” he asks. He remembers this game from old days when drinking was for raising voices instead of keeping them quiet. 

“I think that’s how my mothers played, but the water’s all the way back in the car.” 

He smiles and fights of the urge to stroke the side of her face. She has so few occasions to be lazy; it’s nice to know she has it in her. 

“I have four parents: two mothers two fathers." Her voice is steady, as if she's reading from a book. "I was a virgin birth. I miss the taste of camel meat.”

“Too easy,” Max quips.

“Really? Which one’s the lie?”

“The second…?” his voice lifts as her cheeks press into a smile. He can feel the side of her face pressing against him.

“Try again.”

“Ok, explain.”

"The first one’s the lie: two mothers, one father. I came from something called 'artificial insemination’ – my birth mother and father never had sex. Apparently back then it wasn’t too unusual, nothing worth mentioning.”

He chuckles. “Convenient when there’s a god to slay.”

"Keep that in mind when the girls start writing down myths about you.”

“They haven’t yet?” he grumbles. Stories follow him; he wishes they would stop. He's wondered if they are the price of anonymity.

“I’ve tried to keep those stories to a minimum.” She waits for a reaction then grows impatient. “But the ones the Boys tell… and the Groundlings… sometimes I have to wonder if any of them are true.” 

He grumbles at first, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “Like what?” 

"You have to take a turn first,” she taunts him. “Wait til next round.”

There’s something calming about Furiosa's weight against him, how her chest presses against his chest in a steady rhythm... and her breaths are clean and soft and all he ever wants to hear. Sometimes he dreams about her collapsing in on herself as he shakes her to dust. Other times he dreams about her crumpling from standing – it’s the scene on the sand dunes all over again, except every time something different takes her down every time. She still howls all the way down though; that part never changes. 

But not now- now she is calm if not calculating… no, definitely calculating. Furiosa's up to something; behind her words he can practically hear the gears turning in her head. When she lifts her head, he can see the glint her eyes take when she’s thinking and enjoying the challenge. He hasn’t the slightest idea what she's after, but he likes her this way. 

“Go on,” she urges, “your turn.”

Max drapes an arm over her hip. He’ll start from the beginning he supposes, like she did, with details so far removed from his life they might as well have belonged to someone else. In a way they do. He knows his childhood was happy in the way he knows that the earth is round and that snow is made from water. He also knows he doesn’t deserve that past; he failed it too.

“I was an only child… I killed my first man when I was fourteen.. I think I may have forgotten how to swim.” He abandons the words once they are free of his mouth, gives them no more explanation, not even any more thought. 

“The second?” Furiosa asks. 

“No, the third.” She’s looking at him expectantly. “Like riding a bike people used to say; you never forget how to swim.”

He dreams about swimming sometimes. Swimming dreams are the best dreams. He knows he’s dreaming when the water slips over his body; he kicks harder when the realisation hits him because he knows he would wake up otherwise. But if Sprog or Jessie are there… he jolts himself to his version of reality; those dreams don’t end well.

She sighs and relaxes against him so he can’t see her face. “I never learned, not even to float.”

“With all those random pools around?” He frowns and wrinkles his nose. 

“Oh no, you’re right,” she laughs, “no question about that.” No one knows enough to teach me. Where I grew up we had water, at least for part of the year. It was from a river, wide but not very deep.” Her flesh fingers start to play with the frayed hem of his shirt. “I meant to tell you, we radioed Gastown; they think they have the right length prop shaft. They’re even willing to spare it for the right price.”

She wouldn't lie about the prop shaft; she wouldn’t. He wonders how long she’s known; it can’t be long or else she would have told him. Really he should be grateful he’s remembered at all. She has enough other things on her mind – responsibilities, obligations…

“I do know about obligations. I'm rubbish at them.” His hands find the taunt muscles of her neck, and he presses his fingers where she is unexpectedly soft. She tenses at first, and he’s worried he pressed too aggressively. Tendons pop beneath his touch; she grunts and eases. He thinks about sliding his fingers under her paldron but decides against it – too intimate. 

“Are we still playing?” Furiosa asks as if she's trying not to order him to keep playing. Authority suits her.

He needs another statement if he wants to keep hearing her voice, and he does. “I don’t want to come to Gastown for my prop shaft.”

She lifts her head, and he studies the pink scar above her eyebrow. It's shines, catching the long rays of light that spread from behind her like a halo. "Don't you want to know which one of mine is the lie?"

“OK.” They all sounded true. 

“Well, guess.” She rests her chin on the back of her hand. 

There were so many little details she could have altered. It only takes one word to make a lie. “I give up.”

She chuckles. “Well I guess you'll never know,” she teases. “And yours…” she lifts her left hand with its three metal fingers. She sets it down and traces circles in the dust above Max’s shoulder, and there's something soothing about the quiet _shhhih_ of dust against metal.

“Some of the Boys saw you while they were sick in the shop, and they've started saying that you were V-8, come to test Joe; when he failed the test by mistreating you, V-8 sided with me.”

He frowns. “ Can V-8 do that?” He still doesn't understand these people and their bizarre machine god.

“First I've heard of it too, but it suits our purposes well enough. Now we wait and see if the story holds now that the Boys know you piss and shit like everyone else.”

His face is hot with embarrassment. “Good thing,” he mutters.

“Are you sure that's not the lie?” she asks almost tauntingly, and he's certain it is. 

He vaguely remembers a time when words came easily, when he could deal in playful banter and witty sarcasm. She chooses her words carefully and always seems to find the rights ones, or if not, she waits until she has. He chooses his words carefully, and they still are always wrong. She wants to bat words around like a cat swinging her paws at a doomed mouse, but such things are long gone, unless of course one counts the frightened man before her. He’s too busy trying to find the right words to tell her that the Boys have it all wrong, that she’s the one who should be their cult figure, not despite of her mortality and humanity but because of it. 

He catches a glimpse of the hazy shape of a ghost peering down at him from the higher ground to the east. She shakes her brown hooded head and chuckles, her eyes crinkling in the sun. Then She pulls her goggles over her eyes and squints at him as if studying an insect through a magnifying glass. “No wonder she calls you _Fool_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Max's Vuvalini ghost is Joy Smithers' Vuvalini, the one who was on top of the Rig with him when he was shot with the arrow.


	7. Faith

“There’s a meeting tomorrow morning in the Vault about the Gastown run; you should come if you’re joining the mission.”

No sooner are the words out of Furiosa's mouth then the wind picks up and huffs a long, breathy _ooool_. Max drops his palms to the ground, and his body shoots up, rolling Furiosa off in the process. He digs the toes of his boots into the dust. His fingers twitch by his thigh holster as he scans the hills to the east.

Her own weapons seem to call to her as she crouches, sprawled on the dusty ground. She touches the pistol she keeps tucked in her gaiter; she's always been especially proud of that hiding spot. She waits, heart rattling in her throat, muscles tense against a coming onslaught.

There’s nothing coming for them except for the night. The road is silent, the desert still. 

I used to be feral,” she says, “for a time. I know what it’s like.” The words leave an ache behind in her belly where the breath that formed them used to be. She remembers the bliss of feeling nothing but hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. She also remembers the panic so deep and violent it felt like her shaking would wear her bones down to dust. Even now, she wants to scurry into some little hideaway with only an angry pistol peering out. Feral, maybe that's why the threads of her thoughts are so frayed.

He says nothing, but his posture relaxes. His fingers dangle aimlessly from his hands, no longer twitching. He turns towards her, expectantly listening. Everything is quiet. She stands, letting the dust fall from her clothing.

How does she say what she needs to say if she doesn't even know what that is? In a lie- that much is clear, package the truth like something precious and vulnerable. She only needs a kernel, a single seed of truth. 

But what? She wants the warmth of his body, the brush of his breath, ragged and feral against her skin... not forever, not even necessarily for now... just again. She doesn't need any of this; she doesn't believe in need. If he never touched her again... if he drove off into the wilderness and out of her life forever.. the lack of him would hurt, but she would manage. It would be just another of life's inevitable pains; it would be part of her life the knots that form in the muscles of her shoulders and that hip that requires periodic popping. She could manage. Not could, would, she would manage; absolutely, she would manage, without question... but she doesn’t want to have to. 

So Furiosa speaks, slowly, her words even more carefully chosen than usual, but the words are still probably wrong, “I don’t miss you, when you're gone. I don’t miss people.”

There they go – free words in the air. She’s left to live with the consequences of their havoc. 

Max looks over his shoulder at her, his sad eyes peering over the slightly askew sandblasted pauldron on jacket. His fingers are twitching again, and she’s certain she said the wrong thing. “You… uh, trust me, right?” he asks.

She nods.

“Don’t.”

Anger rises hot in her belly. They’re still playing “two truths and a lie;” that must be the lie. It must be. She refuses to live in a world where that is not the lie. 

“No,” she says with every ounce of her Imperator authority, so much so it comes out sounding as desperate as it is.

She's fine with the salt, the dust, and the darkness… provided that she's not wrong about him. If she's wrong about hm, she's wrong about everything. Everything she's built over the last one-hundred and seventy-two days, from the tenuous peace at the Citadel to her even more tenuous peace with herself rests on this singular cornerstone: there is still good in this wasted world, and it found her. He found her, of all people! She doesn’t know when she last had anything so close to faith.

Furiosa remembers something Capable said to her one especially rough night when fever had stirred up all her old torments and sent all her worst moments percolating to the top of her mind. Furiosa remembers thrashing her swelling body, relishing in the deep, sharp pain of aggravated wounds. Her muttering turned to shouts and then, as she ran out of air, ragged, pitiful wales. 

Capable took Furiosa’s face in both hands with surprising firmness and said with a voice clear and unwavering, “Bad people don’t feel guilty.” 

Furiosa didn't stop then, but her protests weakened. Maybe she had just burned out her fuel reserves. Capable probably thought her words hand helped, but they hadn't – not yet at least; they would need another few days to do their work. They still aren't finished.

She still hasn't told Max how she almost died again; she's not sure if she ever will. By the time he'd found his way back with the salvage team, Furiosa had been back on her feet – more than a bit wobbly to be sure, but also more than able to convincingly pretend her recovery had been smooth. She's seen his eyes linger on the still bitter dent in the flesh inside her elbow. Maybe some day he will ask why the scar isn't a smooth and silvery perfect match to his. Maybe he already knows.

Furiosa approaches Max with her left hand outstretched and adjusts his wayward pauldron for him. Metal scrapes over plastic. He'd meant what he said; it's a lie exactly because he doesn't intend it to be one. Her faith, small as it may be, is still secure.

She forces a slight smile; it’s meant to be a playful smirk to lighten the mood, but it feels like a failure. “But thanks for the warning,” she whispers more weakly than she wanted. Nothing is coming out right.

Maybe the mood shouldn't be lightened. Their eyes meet but only for an instant, but then he looks away, out over the endless salt. Long rays of light race over the glimmering ground and bounce back to the orange sky. All the colors blur: yellow to orange to red to purple to a dark blue at the edges of the sky like a pool of water in the darkness. There are no clouds to cast shadows, just empty, inescapable colour. 

“Do you ever think… the world would be better off without us… without people?” she asks, certain that this pristine quiet is all the world ever wanted for itself.

“I know it,” he says, his hands draped over her shoulders.

“The girl's… they think we can do better than the people before us... I can't be so sure.”

"If the world wanted the best..." his hands tighten. "Why are the worst of us the ones left?”

“Do you really think that?”

He's quiet again, and the wind is picking up, moaning long notes to match the long shadows. “With few notable exceptions.” His chin is on her shoulder, his breath hot against her skin. “But when we all turn to salt… does it matter?”

“Turn to salt? Oh no,” she laughs. “Nature doesn't work that way. It's dust for us.” But she has to admit she likes the idea of turning to silvery powder.

She turns to face him, to watch the last of the sun catch the silver in his hair. She pulls him to her; they collide somewhere beneath the tangle of skin and armour between them. Their mouths meet – supple, wet, and gentle – then part. The pair hover in their parallel spaces, faces illuminated in the golden light that softens lines of time and care. They lean in, touching blackened skin to blackened skin. His breath becomes hers, and his heartbeat vibrates through her sternum - _ta-tap, ta-tap_ \- like a tentative fist on a heavy door or a drop of water landing on stone. 

She remembers something her mothers used to say, that sunsets are ordinary; all those brilliant colours are always there, only visible because of the viewing angle. “But to see something magical, turn your back to the last light of day, and see the world from its point of view. Even if you're alone, the beauty of a sunset is all about the company you keep.”

**Author's Note:**

> The grease paint is a special blend of rendered (assumed human) fat and charcoal plus other ingredients. I need to research this more, but my assumption is that the wheel grease is specially formulated to be applied to the face. This is supported by how easily Furiosa can remove it after the storm and apply it again before the first rock rider canyon scene. It seems to blend properties of both modern automotive grease and modern eye makeup. Or...it could just be movie magic, but this is more fun. 
> 
> I headcanon that Furiosa started drawing pictures of people she lost while she was an Imperator. Like everyone else in her world, she had very limited access to writing surfaces, just chalk and stone walls (plus tattoos, but that's a separate headcanon). She would be working on a battle plan or something, and she would start doodling, and the doodles would become the faces. She started using drawing them to ground herself and fight to keep her values. Joe had access to all rooms in The Citadel, and her room doubled as her office, so even though she had considerable privacy as an Imperator, she would still erase the drawings. It was only after she returned from the Road War that her room became her private space. While she was healing she drew the faces again and added others. She had a lot of time to think and even more thinking to do about why she survived and so many others didn't. Max is the only living person on her wall (at least as far as she knows). Her reasons for drawing him are detailed more specifically in _She Used to Dance_ , but the short version is that she wants to live up to the way he sees her and be worthy of us blood and his trust.


End file.
